


Immortality

by Unfeathered



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-25
Updated: 2007-10-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22129867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unfeathered/pseuds/Unfeathered
Summary: Three separate musings on Jack's immortality
Kudos: 10





	Immortality

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://unfeathered.livejournal.com/38499.html) on 25 October 2007.
> 
> 2 drabbles and one double drabble

Laughing at Death

The first time Jack died, he’d thought the Daleks had somehow just stunned him.

The second time, burning up on re-entry, he’d been terrified. He’d known he only had a tiny chance of making it to Earth alive but three long years alone in space had made him risk it. But he’d died, still alone.

And he’d woken up in the Brecon Beacons. Alive. Whole. Not even burned.

He’d laughed.

The third time, he was less scared. And he laughed again.

The fourth time, he laughed as he was dying.

By the twentieth time, he wasn’t laughing. He’d had enough.

Never-Ending

Jack used to wonder what it would be like to be immortal, back when he was a Time Agent and then when he was a con-man. Wondered what it would be like to live linearly, day after day, year after year, instead of dipping in and out of eras as he pleased.

Now he knows. Now he wonders what it would be like to die, and not come back. Wonders if killing himself would work. Doesn’t dare try, just in case it does.

So he lives and he suffers, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Life never-ending.

Eternity

_Inspired by[xwingace](https://xwingace.livejournal.com/)'s fic [Stuck in Traffic at the Magic Roundabout](http://xwingace.livejournal.com/58308.html) and the realisation that Jack would live in the slow lane right up to the era in which he was actually born, and beyond._

Three thousand years. Thirty centuries. Forty-three average human lifetimes. One million and ninety-five thousand days.

It’s an inconceivable amount of time, but Jack has lived it.

The despair of trying to conceive it has sent him mad over and over again, sometimes for decades, until he dies somehow and comes back sane. It’s driven him to suicide a few dozen times, but he always comes back.

He laughs when he remembers how hard it was at first just to get through a whole day, trapped in the slow lane, unable to hop to a different time the moment he got bored. If he’d known then that he’d still be here three thousand years later… it wouldn’t have helped. Because he has no choice. There’s nothing he can do but live. Forever. He’ll still be around when the human race has spread itself across countless planets, when the Earth has gone, when everything has died and the Universe is black and cold. He’ll die because there won’t be any air but he’ll come back to die again. He’ll always come back. And it will never, ever end.

It’s inconceivable, but Jack has the rest of eternity to try and comprehend it.


End file.
